Don Quijote de la Mancha — Primera parte

Don Quixote of La Mancha — Part One (1605) is the first half of the novel widely regarded as the first modern novel in any European language. An aging, poor country gentleman in the dry plains of central Spain reads so many chivalric romances that his mind cracks: he decides the books are factual histories, that knights-errant still wander the world righting wrongs, and that the world's most pressing need is for one more knight. He digs out his great-grandfather's rusted armor, names his bony old horse Rocinante, christens himself Don Quixote de la Mancha, picks a peasant girl from a neighboring village to be his idealized lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and rides out alone to win glory.

That first sally is a disaster of slapstick — he is knighted as a joke by an innkeeper, beaten bloody by some muleteers, and brought home unconscious draped over a donkey. Undeterred, he recruits a short, plump, talkative neighbor named Sancho Panza as his squire by promising him the governorship of an island. Together they set out on a much longer second sally that fills the rest of Part One: Quixote charges windmills he thinks are giants, fights a vizcayan in a duel mid-sentence, mistakes inns for castles and prostitutes for princesses, frees a chain of dangerous galley slaves who immediately rob him, "does penance" half-naked in the Sierra Morena to imitate Amadís de Gaula, encounters real human tragedies (the love-mad Cardenio, the disguised Dorotea, the runaway Moorish princess Zoraida, the doomed shepherd Grisóstomo), and meets a beautiful slave-girl named Maritornes in the dark of an inn.

The local priest and barber from Quixote's village track him down with a trick: Dorotea pretends to be a queen named Micomicona whose kingdom needs a knight's protection. Hidden inside that long ruse are interpolated stories told around inn fires — the cautionary novella *El curioso impertinente*, the captive Christian's escape from Algiers with Zoraida, the secret-marriage entanglement of Don Luis and Doña Clara. By the end the priest and barber lock Quixote in a wooden cage on an ox-cart and trick him into thinking he is enchanted. He is hauled back to his village to recover. Part One closes with him asleep at home, his housekeeper and niece relieved, and the narrator promising a sequel.